


A Pressing December

by stuckytrash (Watsittoyou)



Series: Maria Hill deserves a goddamn raise [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: News Media, Social Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 08:25:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7750462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Watsittoyou/pseuds/stuckytrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky faces the press.</p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>  <b>December 16th, 2011 FOX NEWS</b></p><p> </p><p>  <b>DECEMBER 16TH, 1991</b></p><p> </p><p>Did you know it’s been 20 years to the day since Howard and Maria Stark died in a tragic car accident, leaving their twenty-one year old menace son Tony Stark to become CEO of Stark Industries?<br/>Something about this is incorrect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pressing December

**Author's Note:**

> This is a tag to How do you solve a problem like Maria? It's required reading, I think, as you'll be pretty confused without it. I've tagged it as pre-stucky because it slots into HDYSAPLM, which has Stucky at the end.  
> Also, I chose the title purely for the pun. If you get the pun, A++++ to you (It's a really bad pun)  
> Please leave a kudos and a comment if you enjoyed! I really like playing with the characters of both Bucky and Maria, and feedback would be greatly appreciated as I have more ideas for further fics on my laptop.  
> Twitter handles are fake - I made them up, they are not meant to represent real people. All similarities are unintentional.

“You don’t have to do this,” Maria tells him imploringly, a hand on his shoulder for comfort. “No one’s going to hold it against you if you don’t.”

Bucky lets out a shaky breath and smiles weakly. “I do have to. Those people… they know I’m alive, now. They want answers, and the longer they go without them the more suspicious they’re going to get.”

Maria sighs. “That’s true. Don’t forget we’ve got PR to make some flashcards for you if you want to use them, or just refer to them, not to mention Tony promised that the reporters and journalists here are decent – for journalists, that is.”

It startles a weak laugh out of Bucky and he twists a loose strand of hair around his metal finger. He’s wearing a long sleeved black button-up with the cuffs rolled up to his elbows, and dark jeans. PR thought it would be a good idea to showcase his metal arm rather than hide it, since hiding it would only reinforce the idea that Bucky’s past was something to be shoved down and kept secret. _Someone,_ probably an intern, also thought it was a great idea to put him in mildly tight clothing.

That last part was something Maria _definitely_ agreed with.

“Tony and I are both going on stage with you,” They’ve run this plan into the ground countless times, but hearing it once again seems to soothe Bucky’s last minute nerves. “If they ask something you don’t know how to answer, I’ll jump in where I can, and if they ask something too personal or offensive, Tony will just change the subject and talk their ears off as revenge. You good?”

Bucky breathed shakily once more before nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, shouldn’t be… shouldn’t be too hard, right?”

Maria smiles warmly at him. “Let’s go. Tony!”

The man appears only a moment later, sunglasses perched on the edge of his nose and his tie in a wonky knot, hair in disarray, and the _slightest_ trace of lipstick beneath his collar. Maria raises an eyebrow, twisting to see out of the door to see Pepper walking purposefully down the corridor, hair only slightly out of place and lipstick somewhat smudged.

She rolls her eyes, darting over to correct his tie and collar in a smooth movement, leaving his hair a mess because at this point, it’s a lost cause.

“Let’s get this show on the road. Mr. Stark, if you’d do the honours…”

Tony beams at her, twisting the door knob and pushing the door open, and the quiet chatter of the crowd instantly becomes a roar. Photographers skirt around the edges and lights flash at them in attempts to get both their attention and good publicity shots. Journalists and reporters are on their feet, clamouring for a rise from Tony, as the most visible.

Tony leads them forward, Maria a close second, and finally, slowly, Bucky. They take their seats, Bucky in the centre.

Instead of dying off, the crowd only gets louder, and the flashes seem to get brighter, and Bucky just flinches, slouching in on himself almost protectively.

“I’m sorry – can – can you guys turn the flash off? I’m sorry – I just –”

The room splits off into a stunned silence. There are quiet clicks as each photographer clicks off the flash and resumes taking photos. Breathing out, Bucky seems to relax next to Maria.

While the room is still silent, Bucky surveys each and every face, both critical and wary, and there is something in that look that, despite his demeanour, clearly displays a silent threat to the press.

“Uh… Hi?” he cringes almost instantly. “I’m sorry. I’ve never done a conference before.”

“That’s okay,” Maria murmurs, and the microphones do pick her up, but the reporters don’t particularly care for her. “You’ve got your cards.”

Slightly startled, as if he had just noticed them, Bucky glances at the card at the top. Licking his lips nervously, he picks it up.

“My name is James Buchanan Barnes,” he reads, though he sounds like he’s making a speech. He still manages to let his eyes dart between the card and the press, keeping them in the loop. “I was born on March tenth, 1917. I met –” He sucks in a sudden gasp as he takes in the next card. Maria reads it over his shoulder, twinging with sympathy. Bucky coughs. “I met Steve Rogers when I was eight years old. When I was twenty five I enlist – enlisted?” he hesitates again, shooting a confused look to Maria.

“What is it?” she asks, confused. Textbooks were consulted for period accuracy, so everything should have been nit-picked.

“I didn’t enlist.” He shakes his head, shaking it off. “I was _drafted_ in 1942, and joined the 107th Infantry in 1943. The same year, I was taken prisoner for the first time by HYDRA in Italy. I was experimented on for several weeks.” He starts to diverge a little more from his cards, clearly growing a little more comfortable in his surroundings. “I was rescued by _Steve_ , who’d gotten his dumb ass turned into a super soldier, and we ended up forming the Howling Commandos after we escaped.” He smiles sadly. “In early 1945 we went on a mission to the Alps, where I was thrown off a moving train and presumed dead. Steve –” His voice trembles again and he looks away from the press. “Steve was declared missing in action and presumed dead three days later.

“Unbeknownst to anybody, the experiments Dr. Zola performed on me in ’43 allowed me to survive the fall with the loss of my left arm.”

There are a small stack of cards left, but Bucky pushes them away, choosing to go for a more open, honest, unguided manner of speaking.

“Intermittently over the next twenty years, I was subjected to hundreds of different methods of torture, including physical and emotional abuse as well as manipulation, electroshock therapy, and more I’d rather not talk about. They developed technology to… erase my memories after hypnosis couldn’t work for much longer. After they had erased my memories, they trained me into the perfect weapon, not even a soldier, not even human, so that they could… They could use me to kill their targets.” His breath catches once again and he eyes Tony out of the corner of his eyes. “High profile targets. Two of which included Howard and Maria Stark.”

There is a shocked, collective gasp from the press and the cameras start clicking more insistently, and some of the journalists start shouting questions at him. Tony doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even tense, just lounges the same as he had been before, almost bored looking.

“Eight months ago, I was recovered by SHIELD and have been recovering my memories and coming to terms with the torture I endured.”

The reporters give no indication that they were listening, still shouting questions at him.

Bucky turns a pleading look onto Maria and she nods, resolute. “If we could have order and one question at a time that would be appreciated.”

“Mr. Stark! How do you feel knowing that the man next to you has murdered your family?”

 “You know, as I deal with everything else. Alcohol and publicly denied emotions. In all seriousness, Bucky Barnes didn’t kill my parents. HYDRA did.”

“Sergeant Barnes! How could you betray your country and fight for the very division you were protecting us from?” One insolent reporter asks.

Bucky gapes at him, offended and disgusted. “Did you miss the part where I said I was tortured for _years_? Had my memories _erased_?”

The reporter, admittedly, dithers under his glare.

“If you experienced such a degree of torture, how are you still alive without any sort of scar or mark?”

Bucky almost sags with relief at a question that doesn’t make him overly uncomfortable.

“Zola’s bastardised version of the serum kept me alive in the fall, and he later continued his experimentation in order to strengthen the serum. Although I should mention that I do have some… _pretty bad_ scarring on the –” he presses down on his left shoulder with his right hand. “-the left side of my body.”

“Who were your other victims?”

Bucky’s hands trembled and he flattened them against the table nervously. Maria stepped in, seeing his discomfort.

“Unfortunately, almost all of the assassinations performed by The Winter Soldier under HYDRA’s command require a high clearance level in order to access. We’re unable to share this information at this time, but the surviving family members have been notified of the situation, and have all agreed that the information should be confidential. Howard and Maria Stark are notable exceptions due to Tony Stark’s relationship to Bucky Barnes.”

“Agent Hill, how do you tie into this?”

Maria tries not to puff up her chest in order to make herself seem more important as she has done on several occasions when explaining her theory on Bucky’s survival. She gives them the cliff notes explanation.

“I had a theory, early in the 2000s, as to how to discover the identity of The Winter Soldier. I received several crucial clues that allowed me to conclude that Bucky Barnes was alive, and I managed to uncover HYDRA in the process.”

 **“** How many assassinations have been performed?”

“Over two dozen is the only answer we can provide.” Hill replies firmly.

“Don’t you think, as one of World War Two’s leading soldiers and heroes, you should have been able to withstand such degrees of torture, instead of allowing yourself to become their weapon?”

Once again, the three on the podium were shocked into silence.

“Allowing myself?” Bucky repeats. “ _Allowing myself_? Did you miss the part where I was tortured too? For twenty _years_ no less? Torture isn’t – it’s not a walk in the damn _park_. It’s supposed to make you doubt yourself. Make you twist inside your own skin, make you forget everything you’re fighting for. Forget everyone. Literally. The fact it took them _twenty years_ to finally twist me into their weapon is a goddamn _miracle_. I was not _weak._ I was not _useless_. I did not _allow_ myself to become _their weapon_. I fought my ass off. I fought long after I found out Steve was dead. I fought _long_ after I knew nobody was ever coming back for me.”

To everyone’s surprise, Tony cuts in immediately after that. “I was tortured. When I was in Afghanistan, I was tortured. Do you know how long it took me to break? Two days.”

The press are completely silent, save for the clicks of photographers.

“It took two days of drowning and waterboarding for me to break. Not even beatings. Not even manipulation, not even anything that left a mark, and it took two days. Bucky Barnes? He took the best part of twenty years for them to even break him enough to wipe his memories. _That_ right there people? That’s heroic. I may be Iron Man, but no one held it against me after I broke after two days. Why hold it against him for breaking after twenty years?”

Pride surges through Maria and she’s glad that she let Tony in on the podium instead of Natasha. Surprisingly, of the two of them, Tony is the most sympathetic to his torture, whereas Natasha relates to his memories literally being wiped – having experienced the same thing under the Red Room’s control.

“They had to keep wiping me,” Bucky says quietly. “Between every mission. Sometimes twice, three times. Every time I’d get my memories back I’d fight hard enough that I almost escaped. They didn’t want to risk that. So no, I did not allow myself to give in to their torture. I _broke_. I’d like to see anyone survive that long and not break.”

The press took a few moments to compose themselves, and Maria was astounded; reporters were like _vultures_. They see vulnerable meat, they dive. They’re rarely surprised and take everything in stride, turning it into their next question. To see them so awestruck, guilty, and even _silent_ … Maria knows this is a very rare event indeed.

“Sergeant Barnes,” one reporter finally calls. “What was your reaction when you found out that Captain Rogers was killed in the line of duty?”

Bucky shudders next to Maria and beneath the table where nobody can see, she rests a comforting hand on his knee.

“I didn’t take it well,” he admits. “He was the first thing I remembered, the first person I tried to find. I hadn’t realised how much time had passed since he’d…” He swallows, turning pleading eyes to the press. “I have one request, though. If you want to ask questions about him, fine. Just… don’t forget that even though I _know_ how long he’s been gone, I… I haven’t lived a lot of time without him.”

“When were you recovered from HYDRA?”

Maria cuts in smoothly, “Early this year. His recovery has been fairly smooth since.”

“How do you feel knowing you were saved by a woman, while Captain Rogers couldn’t save you?”

Maria glares at the reporter, mouth agape and hands curling into fists. Bucky tenses next to her, narrowing his eyes at the reporter too.

“If you’re trying to insinuate that because she’s a _woman_ , she’s less than Steve, or less than _any_ man out there, you’re fuckin’ wrong.”

“Hear, hear.” Tony chimes in, but Bucky’s not done.

“I’ve known heroic women. Peggy Carter, she was a bombshell dame that didn’t take anybody’s, let alone _Steve’s_ shit. Natasha – the Black Widow, she’s one of the most dangerous, intelligent women I’ve ever met. Maria saved my life after working out my identity – a feat that _everybody_ , including heroic ‘men’ like Nick Fury or Coulson, or Clint, failed to do.”

“Don’t you dare try to use your cleverly worded questions to paint Bucky Barnes as a sexist,” Maria adds. “Don’t try to use his ‘20s and ‘30s upbringing to reinforce your outdated society. I do my job, you do yours. That’s why I, a female, God forbid, is sitting here as one of the highest ranking agents of the top Intelligence Agency in the United States, and you’re sitting there, bluffing your way to a good story. You wanted a good story? You got one.”

Maria is suddenly _extremely_ glad for the press’s immediate ability to bounce back and forget previous questions.

“How are you finding life in the twenty-first century?” One quizzical woman asks. She’s fairly young, so Maria can guess she’s probably new. Judging from the almost idyllic look in her eyes as she stares at Bucky, she’s probably a fan.

Bucky chuckles nervously and shoots her a grateful look. “It’s weird. Internet is a thing that’s just… there, you know? Like it’s got everything, but it’s not even real? You can’t see it? It’s like JARVIS, but bigger.”

“Hey, nothing’s bigger than JARVIS. JARVIS is my baby.”

“Yes, Tony,” Bucky agrees, exasperated, but with a smile on his face. “I’m aware of your strange relationship to your AI.”

“What are your plans for the future? Do you plan to join SHIELD?”

Bucky takes a moment to himself to think before answering.

“I already have joined SHIELD. I’ve been on a couple of covert ops, nothing major,” _Lie,_ Maria thinks proudly. “But I haven’t given it much thought as to what else I’ll do.”

“You could open your own restaurant.” Tony says thoughtfully. “Pepper would literally kill for your soufflés.” Bucky laughs.

“Tell her I’ll make some this weekend.”

“You’ve just made me a very popular man.”

“One of your hobbies includes… baking?”

Bucky laughs, flexing his metal arm. “This arm has done a lot of hurting over the past few decades. I wanted to use it for something that doesn’t hurt anyone. Short of being a masseuse and knitting, the only thing I came up with was cooking.”

The press laughs, slightly surprised at his sense of humour; Maria sees the old Bucky Barnes at times like these, where the charm he was infamous for wins over the crowds and the masses and sweet-talks them into giving him a little sugar. God knows he’s got the makeshift Avengers wrapped around his finger.

“How can we know for certain that you are, in fact, Bucky Barnes?” one sharp reporter asks. “You look a great deal like him, indeed, but there is a lot that changed.”

Bucky licks his lips, sighing. “I have my memories, but if I shared them with you, you wouldn’t know if they were truth or not. You could argue that I just read everything there was to read about Bucky Barnes and memorised it all. So, really, there’s no way of knowing other than just to trust me.”

The reporter looks dissatisfied, so Bucky shoots her an apologetic smile.

It’s almost terrifying how easily the press take to him, and omitting a few bumps in the road, Maria and Tony don’t _need_ to be there at all. Bucky seems to take them all in stride, and after a few false starts, awkward pauses, and almost panic attacks, he almost instinctively settles into a breezy smile that the Avengers see so rarely; Tony and Maria know it’s an act for the cameras, to make himself seem likeable and innocent, and to gain public favour, but of all of them, Bucky deserves it the most.

 

And then the articles come out.

 

> **December 14 th, 2011**
> 
> ** BUCKY BARNES: MURDERER OR PRISONER OF WAR? **
> 
> ****
> 
> Recent SHIELD Intel has been given to the public, and the most talked about topic in the last decade has been none other than James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes. He was revealed to be alive by Director Fury last month, amid a flurry of discussion of HYDRA’s infiltration.
> 
> For weeks we have been demanding to see the man himself, alive, in all his former glory. Many of you have probably seen the video already, but for those who haven’t, the press conference was streamed live by Stark Industries, and has been uploaded to YouTube [here.](%20)
> 
> In the conference, questions of all sorts were bombarded at the long presumed dead World War Two veteran. The most stunning revelation was that he had been kept alive by HYDRA for a reason – to become an assassin.
> 
> An assassin that happened to have been responsible for Tony Stark’s parents’ death, no less.
> 
> It’s incredibly worthwhile to mention that he had suffered twenty years of intermittent torture before they wiped his memory using electro-shock therapy. Barnes mentioned he received extreme physical abuse as well as emotional manipulation (surrounding Captain Rogers’ death if you ask me), and sometimes had to have his mind wiped several times in between ‘missions’ (assassinations).
> 
> There are many different scholarly articles that all reference the new ground-breaking technology that targets electric impulses towards the hippocampus of the brain in order to stimulate chemical reactions and possibly being used to suppress emotions. Of course, in these articles, they’re all on animal subjects, and have been completely painless and safe shocks. Something tells me (Barnes’ sensitivity to light, perhaps) that this was not the case for Barnes.
> 
> Agent Maria Hill of SHIELD, the woman who rescued Barnes from HYDRA single-handedly, told us that ‘The Winter Soldier’ (Barnes’ codename when with HYDRA) performed over two dozen assasinations. Assuming this is between 24 and 36 people – or a median of 30 – this is a lot of people. However, we know this was spread out over almost fifty years. Two of these targets were the elder Starks in one year. So, approximately 28 murders over 50 years? It doesn’t seem like a lot.
> 
> Unless, of course, these were as high profile as suggested. That would make things a lot more difficult to write off, wouldn’t it?
> 
> This is not to say, of course, that I’m excusing the murders of those killed, but I am a firm believer that the Winter Soldier did not have a lot to say about it. Assuming Agent Hill told the truth when she said surviving family members were informed, if they had agreed to keep it quiet, then perhaps they forgive a truly innocent man. Not to mention that [The United States Government has already pardoned JBB.](%20)
> 
> It is my expectation, therefore, that he will receive unanimous political favour, possibly even awards for being the longest surviving prisoner of war.

 

 

 

 

> **December 16 th, 2011 FOX NEWS**
> 
> **DECEMBER 16 TH, 1991**
> 
> Did you know it’s been 20 years to the day since Howard and Maria Stark died in a tragic car accident, leaving their twenty-one year old menace son Tony Stark to become CEO of Stark Industries?
> 
> Something about this is incorrect.
> 
> That’s right. Not so much an accident as it is a cleverly devised assassination plot performed by[ The Winter Soldier.](%20) Or, for those of you who are new here, James Buchanan Barnes.
> 
> That’s right, folks, 1944’s sweetheart, and 1945’s second most tragic death Bucky Barnes assassinated Tony Stark’s parents.
> 
> Apparently he was under mind control and brainwashing for several decades, but riddle me this – how is he still alive, and barely looking a day older than his ’44 candids? Supposedly he was kept on ice between missions (assassinations) and had an iteration of[ Captain Rogers’s super soldier serum](%20) pumping through his veins. But if he really was mind controlled or brainwashed… How on earth does he remember it?
> 
> Something about this is fishy to me. I don’t trust Bucky Barnes, I don’t care who he was in the 40s, who he was to Steve Rogers, he’s an assassin to me.

 

 

 

 **JBBINNOCENT** @fruityputty

@FoxNews if anybody had asked for your opinion they sure as hell would regret it now

 

 **Derek** @twas_chun

@FoxNews here you are pretending to be relevant lmao

 

 **Philippa** @Degreeee_p

@FoxNews ‘How does he remember it’ here’s my thesis on the Hippocampus and memory since you’re so confused http://tinyurl.com/STS/LTS/HIPCMP

 

 

**POLL: SHOULD BUCKY BARNES BE INDICTED FOR HIS CRIMES**

**78% NO – HE’S SUFFERED ENOUGH**

**12% YES – HE’S A MURDERER**

**10% I DON’T CARE**

**Breaking: 93% of Twitter Accounts campaigning for Barnes’ Indictment and sending death threats have been tracked and found to be NEO-NAZIS and HYDRA Sympathisers**

They have been found with numerous HYDRA files and Swastikas along with HYDRA insignias. Some of them were found to be plotting to break HYDRA leaders – most notably[ Alexander Pierce and Brock Rumlow](%20) out of prison. Read more

**Bucky Barnes looking HOT in Pap photos from outside Stark Tower ---- >>>** **See here!**

“That went different than I expected,” Bucky tells Maria, utterly lost as he reads yet another article on his miraculous survival. Many had been overwhelmingly positive, but a few bigoted ones worried him immensely.

“It’s fine,” Maria tells him. “Everything will blow over by next year, just you wait and see.”

Bucky nods slowly. “Some of them are focusing on what I said about enlisting. Was I wrong about that?”

Maria shrugs, at a loss for words. “I don’t know. Our textbooks and resources told us you enlisted, but you remember it differently. You could be right, but we just don’t know.”

Bucky sighs. “Steve would know.”

Maria feels an ache in her chest and she longs for Bucky to have his best friend back, but she knows that’s impossible.

“Yeah. Yeah, he would.”

Without another word, Bucky gets up and takes his leave towards his room, and Maria is left wondering why, of all people in the world who deserved something good, Bucky is left all alone, while she can do nothing to help him.

**IS AGENT MARIA HILL DATING BUCKY BARNES? ---- >>> [GET THE SCOOP](%20)**

 

She also wonders if Fury would give her a raise for that article alone.


End file.
